Yokogawa Electric Corporation has announced the release of CENTUM™ VP R6.11.10, an enhanced version of the CENTUM VP integrated production control system.

Accordingly, the new version of CENTUM VP will offer improved plant uptime through the addition of a redundancy function to a new IO card. Specifically, supporting communications via the PROFINET communications protocol for industrial networks. Furthermore, to reduce project costs and improve efficiency in plant operations, functional enhancements are also available.

Development Background

PROFINET is one of the most widely used Ethernet-based industrial communications protocol worldwide. Particularly, highlighting superb real-time performance.

In 2019, Yokogawa developed an IO card that supports PROFINET. While this enabled the monitoring of the operation of PROFINET-compatible devices from CENTUM VP, more was necessary to improve reliability and uptime. To meet this need, Yokogawa has developed a new PROFINET IO card that supports a redundancy function. Thus, by doing so, it has made high reliability and high uptime a reality.

This new CENTUM VP release also features functional enhancements to the Unified Alarms and Conditions Server (UACS) and the CCC Inside™ for the Yokogawa CENTUM VP compressor control solution. Thus, will improve the efficiency of operations and engineering at plants.

Product Features

PROFINET IO card redundancy support for greater reliability and increased uptime

To improve plant uptime, Yokogawa added the S2^*1 redundancy function to the new PROFINET IO card. Therefore, enabling its use in a redundant configuration.

Thanks to this and enhancements that have been made to the card’s network diagnostics function, this device has been certified by a third-party agency as having all the PROFINET functions for Conformance Class^*2 B (CC-B). This includes the system redundancy that is so important in process control.

It supports the use of NAMUR NE107^*3 compliant self-diagnostic information from devices that support PA Profile 4.0^*4 and enables the use of a motor control center that centrally controls motor power sources. Thus, remote I/O and Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer (Ethernet-APL) compatible device operation monitoring are also now possible. This expands the scope of control that is possible with a single control system.

Improved plant operational efficiency with alarm management that supports NAMUR NA102

When a specific alarm has been suppressed in the UACS, it has been possible to display suppression status in the Human Interface Station (HIS) graphics. By enabling the implementation of alarm management in compliance with NAMUR NA102^*3, this can help to improve operational efficiency throughout a plant.

Seamless integration of process and compressor control systems

Moreover, it is now possible to undertake integration and engineering using a single CENTUM VP project database for the process and compressor control systems. This release of CENTUM VP also enables process and compressor control systems to connect to a Vnet/IP^*5 control network within the same domain. As such, this allows highly seamless system integration and helps to reduce project and maintenance costs.

Notes

*1 A duplexing method defined in PROFINET. For a single PROFINET IO device, an application relation (AR) with two PROFINET IO controllers is established (primary AR and backup AR).
*2 This defines the scope of functions possessed by a PROFINET device. There are three incremental classes: CC-A, CC-B, and CC-C.
*3 NAMUR: German process automation user organization; NE107: Specifications for self-diagnosis functions of field devices; NA102: Specifications for procedures for designing alarm management within process control systems.
*4 An application profile for PROFIBUS and PROFINET devices defined by PROFIBUS and PROFINET International.
*5 A control network developed by Yokogawa that offers both high reliability and responsiveness and conforms to the IEC61784-2 communications standard for process industries.

-12 April 2024-